To the Moon, NASA? Not on This Budget, Experts Say 26 August 2009, by SETH BORENSTEIN , AP Science Writer

To the moon, NASA? Not on this budget, experts say 26 August 2009, By SETH BORENSTEIN , AP Science Writer

at least an extra $30 billion through 2020.

Even NASA's soon-to-be-retired space shuttle fleet has proved that getting off the ground isn't a given, with two launch scrubs this week of a mission to the international space station.

The space station is finally finished. Yet NASA's long-standing plans call for junking the outpost in about seven years. If the agency keeps that schedule, it would mean that in the next decade NASA's astronauts could be going nowhere if

there's no moon mission.

In this Aug. 14, 2009 photo, a new space vehicle stands Obama's special panel looked at other options ready in NASA Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida. The final segments of the available for the space program - such as skipping Ares I-X rocket, including the simulated crew module the moon and going directly to Mars or an asteroid, and launch abort system, were stacked on Aug. 13 on a or just cruising in the solar system. But they kept mobile launcher platform, completing the 327-foot launch using words like "least worst scenario" during their vehicle and providing the first entire look of Ares I-X's final public deliberations earlier this month. In their distinctive shape. The Ares I-X flight test is targeted for report due Monday, they will also give advice about Oct. 31. (AP Photo/ NASA) the end of the shuttle and space station programs.

The White House told the panel to aim to stay within current budget estimates. (AP) -- NASA will test the powerful first stage of its new Ares moon rocket Thursday, a milestone in a "If you want to do something, you have to have the program that has already spent $7 billion for a money to do it," said panel member and former rocket that astronauts may never use. astronaut Sally Ride. "This budget is very, very, very hard to fit and still have an exploration When that first stage is tested, it will be mounted program." horizontally. The engine will fire, shake and make lots of noise. But by design, it will not leave the The options that face the White House come down ground. The same could be said for NASA's plans to variations and combinations of these themes: to go to the moon, Mars or beyond Earth orbit. It's Pay more, do less or radically change American not so much a physical challenge for engineers as space policy. The most radical idea would be to it is a financial challenge for budgeteers. hand much of NASA's duties to private companies.

The $108 billion program to return to the moon by "The problem is the size 14 foot in the size 10 2020 was started five years ago by then-President shoe," said American University public policy George W. Bush. But a special independent panel professor Howard McCurdy, author of several commissioned by President Barack Obama books about the American space program. "It's just concluded that the plan cannot work on the really hard to fit it all in. A lot of the assumptions existing budget schedule because it's likely to cost made in 2004 (for the Bush plan) have just not

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materialized." costs lower. It's an idea the panel and some in the Obama administration have discussed. The panel will not tell the president which choice to make. That will be up to Obama. Until NASA is told Some kind of change is needed in NASA plans, to change course, it will continue with the Bush said Hubbard, a professor at Stanford University: plan. "What we ended up with now is clearly unsustainable." Thus, the first big test of moon program hardware is the rocket stage firing Thursday in Promontory, --- Utah. That test is of the main get-off-the-ground engine in the Ares I rocket. The full test rocket, On the Net: complete with a dummy crew capsule and escape system, Ares I-X, is supposed to get a launch test NASA's moon program: at Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 31. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/m ain/index.html That rocket will be taller than the space shuttle, illustrating an agency eager to launch something The outside panel looking at human spaceflight: new. http://www.nasa.gov/offices/hsf/home/index.html

"NASA has been like a star athlete that's broken ©2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. world records back in the 1960s and is stuck in the This material may not be published, broadcast, bleachers ever since, unable to suit up for what it rewritten or redistributed. does best," said space scientist Alan Stern, who quit last year as NASA's associate administrator for science.

But, as has been the case since about 1971, money is holding engineers back, Stern said.

"Bush never delivered on his promise to up NASA's funding," Stern said. He added that the previous NASA administrator "tried cannibalizing NASA (to pay for exploration) but that wasn't enough."

While the Bush administration cut some spending, the "real killer" came in Obama's first budget, which starts in October, said Scott Pace, the No. 3 at NASA during the Bush administration. Obama cut $3 billion from projections for future spending on exploration, with even more cut when inflation is factored in, said Pace, director of space policy at George Washington University.

The administration gave the agency an extra $400 million, however, as part of the stimulus package.

Former NASA associate administrator Scott Hubbard said if the United States invited other countries, including Russia and perhaps China, on the next space journey, it would keep America's

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